The Best Brunches in Boston Right Now

Secrets to surviving a New England winter: carbs, more carbs, and day drinking. In other words: brunch. And while our city is never lacking in epic weekend eggs, there are certain brunch menus that particularly satisfy during the cold-weather months -- hot cocktails may have something to do with it. And if said brunch spot encourages pajamas and bedhead? It’s enough to get you out from between those flannel sheets.

Kenmore Square

The best brunch to pretend it’s summer
They offer one of the best selections of oysters in the city and the opportunity to chase them with a couple of lobster rolls. The seasonal cocktails are bracing, the service is on point, and the brioche French toast and giant homemade biscuits easily fulfill your carbs quota.

South End

American twists on Taiwanese, Thai, and Vietnamese classics
This is the spot to overindulge on both drinks and dim sum. Fried egg banh mis with sweet soy bacon, stuffed baos, and tea-smoked ribs are all worth loading up on. Bonus: No need to worry about sleeping in -- Myers + Chang has one of the latest brunches in the city (running until 3:45pm), so it's good for those winter mornings when you can’t bear to leave the comfort of bed until noon.

South End

Attending brunch in your pjs is encouraged
It’s simple, really: It’s a pajamas brunch, which means flannel is not just accepted but encouraged. Add to that Stoli-spiked mimosas, a fried chicken eggs Benedict, and their famous Golden Girls French toast sticks, and you have a real reason to leave the comforts of your overheated home.

Cambridge

New England brunch done perfectly
Puritan and Company has everything you’d expect from a seasonal New England brunch: crispy fish sandwich, sourdough griddle cakes, potato and leek quiche, and one of the best croissants in the city. Most tempting of all, the pick-and-choose pastry basket means you don’t have to choose between the cider donut and cinnamon bun.

Somerville

A welcoming, woodsy space serving huge platters of brunch fare
Corned beef hash, grilled pork belly with eggs, brioche French toast, and a classic Irish coffee? They all do a chilled body good. And yes, there is an brunch time cheeseburger, as well as several cold-weather friendly “brunch beers.”

Back Bay

A marriage of French and New England cooking that works beautifully
The French do everything better, including surviving winter. So don your most European daywear and lean into a classic Francophile menu of charcuterie, croque monsieurs, lemon ricotta pancakes with lavender creme anglaise, and a niçoise salad. You might want to spring for a Champagne cocktail, but on the other hand, the bouillabaisse Bloody Mary with seared prawn is pretty damn epique. And you have to love the class of a waiter who takes your order down in a leather Moleskine.

South End

Possibly the best brunch poutine in all of Boston
Someone at the table has to order the Sunrise Poutine, which includes scrambled eggs, fries, cheese curds, chicken gravy, and Canadian bacon. If you’re feeling guilty, add in the kale and Brussels sprout salad (then snag a bite of someone else’s hangover burger). But the coziest dish has to be the bourbon apple French toast, which you’ll immediately want to replicate at home during the next snow day.

Harvard Square

If you want to ball out on brunch, you have the option
If Waypoint’s smoked whitefish pizza doesn’t sustain you until spring, the brown butter pancakes might. Or hell, you could just commit to playing Kardashian for a day and come for mimosas and the caviar service, which runs for $195. In other words, there is no way to get it wrong at this seafood-centric spread, which also includes tremendous raw bar choices (the smoked and salted peel-and-eat shrimp is one star here) and a sweet tooth-satisfying (and enormous) raisin and walnut cinnamon roll.

Somerville

They do a White Russian made with chocolate Nesquik
And there's also hot chocolate French toast with whipped cream and marshmallows. The towering piece of sweet corn bread piled high with a heaping scoop of melting butter is what dreams (and diabetes) are made of, and that's before you even attacked the fried chicken and waffles with hot pepper syrup. There's ample reason to get yourself to Somerville on a snowy Monday for their service-industry focused brunch.

Cambridge

Obsessively crafted pizza in an industrial-chic restaurant and cafe
Brunch cocktails, high-quality coffee, and monstrous sticky buns? That's reason enough to don the Bean Boots -- and that's before you even begin implementing plates like the appropriately named Hot Mess, a skillet packed with home fries, bacon, breakfast sausage, Cheddar, scallions, and caramelized onions, all topped off with a couple of farm eggs and banana pepper relish. Bonus: Those farm eggs can also be used to breakfast-ify the pizza of your choosing.

South End

Your go-to for meat piled on top of meat
Sometimes getting through a brisk morning requires a lot of meat, and here you’ll find a perfect curing combo in the form of a brisket, shank, and tongue hash poutine. The South End steakhouse embraces brunch as a paleo affair, which means braised beef cheek huevos rancheros and a hefty serving of steak and eggs. For lighter -- or at least less beefy -- fare, try the fried chicken and a lobster Benedict, which pairs perfectly with the Prime Raw Bloody (that would be a Bloody Mary enhanced by a raw oyster and jumbo cocktail shrimp).

Fort Point

Split the rib-eye if you're celebrating something
Champagne can chase away the deepest of wintertime blues. Three different offerings by the glass, including the Veuve Clicquot rosé, pave the way for duck confit croque madame, butter-poached lobster, and pork belly tartine, all of which exceed the hype. Then there’s the rib-eye for two, accompanied by crispy poached eggs, caviar hollandaise, and hash brown potatoes (arguably the most decadent brunch dish in town).

South End

What you really need to know about Lion’s Tail weekend brunch is that it encourages you to wear pajamas -- in other words, you should don your most forgiving bottoms and dive into the bourbon butter French toast, pork belly Benedict, corn cake arepa, and a fried chicken waffle sandwich. And because it’s Lion’s Tail, cocktails are pretty much mandated (any Hemingway fan knows that daytime daiquiris are quite overdue for a comeback).

South Boston

The best part of brunch actually happens before brunch
Yes, Lincoln serves brunch on both Saturday and Sunday, but what makes this place special is the prelude: The Friday Brunch Test Kitchen (10am-3pm) is where chefs experiment with a new brunch menu every week and then offer up a few favorites over the next two days. Past winners have included Nutella s’mores pancakes, wake and bake tater tots, breakfast fried rice, and the insane Cinnamon Toast Crunch boozy milkshake (Fireball whiskey, RumChata, vanilla ice cream, and cereal). You can brunch there during your lunch hour and then commit to nesting during the weekend.

Back Bay

Perhaps pricey, but perfect French cuisine usually is
Have you been squirreling away your money all winter? Then splurge on a three-course prix fixe brunch that’s a study in chichi excess: caviar omelette, lobster bisque, roasted duck breast, and a grilled beef sirloin croque madame, plus a warm honey caramel sticky bun with salted butter ice cream for dessert. If money is no object, go ahead and splurge on caviar service, cheese flights, and a Champagne cocktail or two.

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This Is the Pizza Donut of Your Dreams

Forget everything you know about donuts, because one Rhode Island bakery is rewriting the rules of this beloved pastry.

Located in Providence’s Fox Point neighborhood, PVDonuts is famous for crafting brioche-style donuts that are more buttery than sugary, and light and flaky like a croissant. This unique culinary method creates the perfect base for a variety of over-the-top flavors that rotate monthly to keep visitors on their toes about what the capital city’s first speciality donut shop will do next.

The most popular flavor, the pizza donut (yes, pizza. donut.), is PV’s traditional brioche pastry filled with red sauce, topped with fresh mozzarella melted in the oven, covered with even more cheese, and garnished with a pepperoni. An ode to Rhode Island’s official state drink, the coffee milk, another popular menu item is made by covering a donut with a homemade glaze that, according to owner and lead baker Lori Kettelle, tastes like “melted down coffee ice cream” -- and is topped with crushed Oreos, for good measure. For a more savory experience, the everything bagel donut is filled with a cream cheese mousse, glazed in a malted barley mixture, and finished off with a classic everything bagel seed mix.

In addition to brioche donuts, PVD also serves old-fashioned cake-like donuts, plenty of coffee options, and milk from Wright’s Dairy Farm. PVDonuts is closed Monday and Tuesday, and can easily sell out of its signature items, so get there early.

Watch the video above to learn more about Providence’s most spectacular donut and why you’ll (maybe) never eat regular pizza again.

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8 Cultural Activities To Class Up Your LA Weekend

Sure, it’s great to spend your weekends watching Marvel movies and DVRing Vanderpump Rules on the DL. But sometimes, you want to do something a little more refined. A little more elegant. Perhaps, you’d like to partake in an activity with a little... culture.

If the last “art” exhibit you liked was a beauty influencer's Instagram, it might be time to break out of your routine and tour some of the cultural highlights of Southern California. Luckily, Los Angeles is surrounded by lovely locales that offer the chance to experience fine art, dance, film, and history, all while taking a break from the city. So, plan a weekend day away and visit one of these cultural gems just outside of LA.

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Food & Drink

This Cafe Has French Toast on Steroids

What’s better than French toast? Deep-fried French toast. Double Chin, a Chinatown cafe helmed by the punny Chin sisters, serves an outlandish dessert best described as French toast on steroids. Inspired by Asian honey toast, the restaurant’s “cubed toast” takes bite-size pieces of house-baked brioche, deep-fries them in French toast batter, and coats them in toppings like berries, granola, and chocolate fudge. The most popular version of the dish, Matcha Ma Call It, comes topped with green tea ice cream, red bean, Pocky sticks, mochi, and a matcha milk drizzle.

Native Bostonians, the Chin sisters are no strangers to fried food, having had their fair share of American junk food classics. But at home, the girls were better adjusted to classic Chinese cuisine, hence the brilliant fusion of flavors found at Double Chin. “We wanted to have a restaurant that truly embodied our identities,” Gloria Chin says. “Our menu’s full of traditional Chinese food with tons of modern twists to it.”